Remember how “legitimate rape” Todd Akin was a pariah, rejected by all, should just slink away, wasn’t our kind of person, certainly didn’t reflect the values of the party, blah blah fucking blah? Well, he got $760K from the NRSC on the weekend before the election. (Of course, John Cornyn doesn’t want to talk about it.)
Here’s the thing: McCaskill completely whupped his ass. He lost by 15 points, and even if you assume every libertarian vote would have gone to him, he still lost by 10 points. It was pretty clear on election eve that he was going down in flames, so the NRSC wasn’t spending that money in hopes of pulling out a win. They either did it out of gross incompetence, or they were throwing down a marker to appease teabaggers after the election (see, we tried!).
Either way, fuck them for thinking we wouldn’t notice.
Capri
There’s a third reason. The consultants who run that group get a percentage of every ad. that is run. More ad.s – even in completely uncontested contests = more in their pockets.
They were just squeezing as much cash as possible out of their clients.
FWIW, right now Mourdock is trying to raise money in Indiana to cover his bills. He’s claiming he was the victim (natch) of a massive smear campaign by the MSM.
deep
Ha!! Capri beat me to it, I was about to say the same thing.
The modern Conservative movement is all about graft and if it isn’t one person stealing a ton of money from their donors it’s another. I doubt that money had anything to do with the campaign and more to do with just lining someone’s pockets.
dmsilev
@Capri:
Where, by ‘massive smear campaign’, he means ‘directly quoted him’.
Tokyokie
Following on the first couple of comments, because the race was so lopsided, there were probably a lot more ad slots available in the St. Louis and Kansas City markets than on TV stations in cities in states with more competitive election races.
Wag
@Tokyokie:
And since those ads were being bought at the last minute, the stations charges top dollar. Win for all!
Wag
@Tokyokie:
And since those ads were being bought at the last minute, the stations charges top dollar. Win for all!
Wag
And since those ads were being bought at the last minute, the stations charges top dollar. Win for all!
amk
Why the grouse ? Idjit cornyn & co threw the money down the drain and got zilch for it.
Schlemizel
@dmsilev:
That has been the goopers definition of a smear campaign for some time now. I seem to remember Grandpa Walnuts pulling that out 4 years ago – “Stop quoting me, thats a smear!”
Punchy
So when does Akin join the Fox And Fuckers morning show?
Mark S.
This warning thing goes away after a little while, doesn’t it?
amk
So cole’s vista moment hit the peak today?
Chyron HR
It was pretty clear on election eve that he was going down in flames
It was pretty clear on election eve that Romney was going to lose, but he sincerely believed until the wee hours of the morning that Moroni would intervene and miraculously make him the winner. I don’t see why you’d expect the rest of the party to be any less delusional.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Maybe they were paying him to go away?
Steeplejack
@amk:
What’s sad is that he doesn’t seem to have noticed. It would be nice if one of the front-pagers acknowledged the problem and said whether someone is investigating it. A “possible SQL injection vulnerability” doesn’t sound like something to ignore.
JR
Or perhaps, like everyone else, the NRSC believed the polls were skewed, because there was just no way that the American people hated the GOP as much as the numbers suggested, right?
JR
Or perhaps, like everyone else in the party, the NRSC believed the polls were skewed, because there was just no way that the American people hated the GOP as much as the numbers suggested, right?
Ash Can
@Capri: I hope Mourdock’s campaign is getting nothing back from that solicitation but instructions on where and how to shove it. It might teach them something about personal responsibility and fiscal conservatism.
scav
@Steeplejack: John asked for someone to mail him the error message (invisible on his end?) and Purplegirl said she had done so so there is that acknowledgement, plus the were working on it comments yesterday.
Walker
OT but the extra wide header on the new mobile site is a pain.
Ash Can
Also too, HEY COLE, FIX YOUR GODDAMNED WEBSITE.
jibeaux
So you can give someone over three quarters of a million dollars, the weekend before election day, which is on a Tuesday, by the way, and in those, what three days, it can all be spent? That seems like a helluva burn rate for that money. What happens if there’s any of it left?
rikyrah
who actually believed they weren’t gonna give him money?
Ash Can
@Ash Can: OK, posted this before I saw Scav’s comment. Am appeased.
NCSteve
@Wag: That’s exactly right. They dumped the money into that race because they had barrels of plutocrat cash cluttering up the hallways and that one was was the only theoretically contested race remaining where there was airtime to buy.
My biggest fear is that next time, or the time after that, someone’s going to find something to do with all the the money from plutocrats who are furious that they’re not yet oligarchs that’s left over after every conceivable minute of television and radio air time has been purchased and do something constructive with it, like, say, build turnout software that actually works or printing out lists and paying people to go door to door and make sure everyone on their list has voted and hook them up with a ride if they haven’t.
Schlemizel
@Ash Can:
Well, its not like they don’t know about it. You can assume they are looking at it. If this were his job I’d expect better responses but its a hobby & something he does out of some sense of either responsibility or need. I bet it takes more time to futz around with all the details than it is worth and I doubt he is making money at it. He has a real job & a real life that have to be taken care of ahead of this vanity project.
Plus JC has shown he rarely if ever reads comments so yelling at him here only annoys the locals.
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack:
The Blog Lord is aware of the problem. Yesterday, he put up a comment in a thread mentioning a new version of FYWP; declared that there’d be glitches for the next couple of days; and then finished by grumbling about the Juicitariat’s grumbling about the glitches (actually just the one glitch, but it keeps recurring). You know, the usual.
Ash Can
@Schlemizel: Precisely because of the fact that this is just a hobby for John, I don’t assume anything. Like I said, I hollered too soon, but Scav’s comment was the first and only indication I saw that anyone in charge here was even aware of the situation.
Frankensteinbeck
@Capri:
The media consistently quoted his comments under the framing that they were bad, wrong, or at least shocking. Since he knows in his heart that everything he said was true and the vast majority of Americans – ALL decent Americans – agree with him, that’s an obvious smear job.
Schlemizel
@Ash Can:
Except the problem has been happening for some time & people have been whining about it in every thread for some time. It might help if some of the FP’ers would update us but even so its safe to assume that someone is looking into it
There is a pattern here that is not unlike trolling.
A problem exists on BJ
Commenters comment on said issue
Life goes on
Someone comments “COLE FIX THIS DAMN THING!”
New thread
Someone comments “anybody else having this problem?”
Someone comments “COLE FIX THIS DAMN THING!”
Life goes on
New thread
Someone comments “anybody else having this problem?”
Someone comments “COLE FIX THIS DAMN THING!”
Life goes on
New thread
Someone comments “anybody else having this problem?”
Someone comments “COLE FIX THIS DAMN THING!”
Schlemizel
I neglected to add
someone trys to stop the pattern and thereby actually prolongs it
Thats my job in this mess I guess
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t think it’s too much to ask for Cole or another front-pager to put up a short post explaining what’s happening, rather than expecting that people will read a comment buried in some random thread.
Xecky Gilchrist
He lost by 15 points, and even if you assume every libertarian vote would have gone to him, he still lost by
1015 points.Adjusted to reflect actual number of Libertarians.
If he’d gotten the PUMA vote in addition to all that, he’d have lost by 15 points, maybe 16.
Forum Transmitted Disease
That’s severance pay. They knew at that point there was no way he could win.
Gindy51
“It was pretty clear on election eve that he was going down in flames,”
Actually it was pretty clear everywhere he was going to lose. All one had to do was drive around my very red area and see NO Mourdock signs while every other GOP sign was up. Some even had Donelly signs!
roc
Or there’s a loophole that allows operators to pay that money out to themselves and/or their allies (likely in return for cushy gigs). Because that would make sense out of a large number of ‘nut-job’ candidates in the last cycle that so-readily made fools of themselves for seemingly no benefit beyond attention.
And say what you will about Trump. But he’s got a sixth-sense for finding loopholes that turn losing propositions into personal profit. The second you see that guy jump into a “loser” deal, you have to know there’s an angle.
WereBear
@Ash Can: Thanks for the laugh, there… when the “Party of Personal Responsibility” takes some, I’ll eat a gluten-free hat.
El Cid
It ends up being a net plus that the Republicans and their ilk are such pure grifters that they grifted their own candidates’ campaign such that the candidates lost.
It’s the Republican version of the frog & scorpion story — hey, I know I promised to help you win instead of just using you to channel money to me and my friends, but, I can’t help myself, it’s my nature.